


Could Be Different

by antiquitea



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-17
Updated: 2010-10-17
Packaged: 2017-10-12 17:59:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/127533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antiquitea/pseuds/antiquitea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joe recovers in a hospital in England after losing his leg just outside of Foy, and mulls over the loss of both his leg and his friend Bill's.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Could Be Different

**Author's Note:**

> Written for my friend Emma, who requested a piece involving Joe Toye from HBO's "Band of Brothers."

_It should be different,_ he thought. Thought, however, rather absent mindedly, the drugs that they'd given him not leaving his mind entirely open to coherent thought processes. Somewhere in his brain, synapses did what they were supposed to, and he knew what he was thinking, or what he wanted to say, but they never quite materialized how he wanted them to. _Yes. It should be different. No. It could be different._

Joe Toye lay in a bed that was not his own, somewhere in England, he couldn't remember where specifically, but it was nowhere near Foy. The little things, he was thankful for in a bigger picture which he ultimately refused to acknowledge. "I just want to be back with the fellas," he'd said to a petite blonde nurse with kind grey eyes, round face, pointed nose and a forced smile. She'd said nothing, and he watched the tears well in her eyes, and then rapidly blink to rid herself of them.

Somewhere in the wooded area near the outskirts of Foy, remnants of what had once belonged to him lay. The blood he had lost, fragments of bone, the red and almost pulp-like matter of muscle and tendons, bits of torn flesh, he was certain that it was there somewhere. He never asked what happened to his leg. He supposed that it was no longer his anyway, seeing as how he didn't have it. Joe had listened to Malarkey go on about possession being nine points of the law as he had felt the corpses of German soldiers, looking for that prized luger. If he didn't possess it, then it wasn't his.

Toye didn't remember enough of the shelling that had occurred near Foy that day, just the sounds of thunder, the flashes of lightning, and the pain which eventually gave way to nothingness, which he would later hear from some doctor with a cockney accent, had been shock setting in. Amidst all chaos, all the exploding trees and missing leg, he did remember the strong, unrelenting arms of Bill Guarnere, attempting to pull him to safety. The Germans had stopped their shelling of the 101st's position long enough to lure his friend out into the fray, and then they had commenced again, seemingly implacable in their need for destruction.

His own carelessness he could understand and begrudgingly forgive. In hindsight, it had been no one's fault but his own that he'd been unable to find cover at that crucial moment. But because of that "Wild Bill" endured a similar fate, when he absolutely did not have to, and that was perhaps what Joe had the most difficulty accepting. One could simply say "wrong place, wrong time," or that it had entirely been the fault of the Krauts. But Joe couldn't shake the feeling that he was as much responsible for Bill's dismemberment as was the mortar that hit them.

Joe longed for his brass knuckles, to put his fist through the closest thing he could reach, if only to burn off an iota of the rage welling up inside him. He settled for balling his hands into fists so tight that the blunt edges of his fingernails dug into his palms, and let the morphine coursing through his body lull him to sleep.

#

"Joe? Hey, Toye. Wake up for christ's sake, will ya?"

Voices of saviors rang in his ears, sounding further away than they truly were. In the haze that clouded his mind as he slowly regained consciousness, Joe could swear that they were back amongst the snow and trees just outside of Foy, digging foxholes into the frozen earth. However, opening his eyes revealed the sterile environment of the hospital which he had been calling home, and Bill Guarnere sitting in a wheelchair at the foot of his bed, looking particularly smug even with the dark circles under his eyes from a lack of sleep.

"About fuckin' time. Y'know, they don't let me out often. The least you could do is be fuckin' awake when I come to visit you," Bill stated, the Philadelphia accent slightly more apparent than Joe had recalled.

Joe propped himself up into a sitting position in his bed, wincing as Guarnere wheeled himself over to be beside him, muttering something along the lines of, "Don't hurt yourself," to which Joe laughingly declared that he should, "Fuck off."

"`Atta boy, Joe," Bill said with a grin, slapping his hand against Joe's thigh, the sensation of it sending a phantom reverberation down to where the rest of his leg should have been. "How ya been? Haven't seen you since Foy."

Joe chuckled and shook his head, running a hand through his hair. It was as if nothing had happened, as if what had occurred hadn't been life changing. That was Bill. It was what it was, and nothing could change it. Other men had met similar and worse fates.

"Well, I've kind of been holed up in this hospital," Joe said, gesturing with his arms.

"What?" Bill grinned, leaning his elbows onto the edge of Toye's bed. "You lose a leg and suddenly you can't break out anymore? You broke out all the time to get back on the line when you were hurt."

Joe looked at Bill and smiled, cocking his head. "I had another leg then. Besides, there's no getting back to the line this time."

"Yeah, well," Guarnere said, looking toward the window and shrugging his shoulders, furrowing his brow.

Neither man said anything for a long while, but the silence felt far from awkward. It was the sort of silence you got used to, sharing a foxhole with another man, not able to say a damn word because the Krauts were too close and even breathing a little harder would give away your position. It was a comfortable silence; a silence formed by men who said all they wanted to say, and needed to say nothing more.

"They say they're gonna send me back to the States soon," Bill was saying, pulling Joe from his thoughts of blood stained snow. "Not when, just soon. Told'em I didn't want to leave just yet. War ain't over, I ain't leavin'."

"War's over for us, Bill," Joe said, looking down at his friend.

"War ain't over for nobody," Bill declared, furrowing his eyebrows, and Joe knew that he was absolutely right.

"You didn't have to," Toye muttered, looking away and down at his hands splayed out on the tops of his legs. Again, his eyes drifted to where his right leg should have been, and he felt furious at the world. Unable to bear it, he looked toward Bill, where his eyes inevitably drifted where his leg no longer was either, and it felt even worse.

"Shuddaup," Bill said, shaking his head.

"You could have left me out there to -"

"Shut. Up," Bill said, punctuating both words as if Joe were not capable of understanding him the first time. "Leave you to what? To bleed out there in the snow a coupla feet away from us? To die? Joe, what kinda man – no, friend – would I be if I had done that? A fuckin' piece of shit one. Every man was thinkin' it, I just did it."

"You would still have your leg," Joe muttered, meeting Bill's eyes.

"Maybe," Bill said, shrugging his shoulders and looking toward the floor. "Maybe not. Maybe I woulda gotten hit anyway. Boom. Blown away like Muck and Penkala. It could be different."

"It should be different."

"How?" Bill asked, leaning closer to Joe. "It should be different how? You being dead ain't exactly something I'd enjoy, y'know." He sighed and then leaned back in the wheelchair. "Maybe it should be different, I don't know. But it's not. Okay?" Joe, who had taken to looking down at his legs again, sighed. "Joe. Y'hear me? It's okay. It's okay. I'm not mad. Well, I guess I am. But not at you. I lost a leg, big whoop. You're alive, and that means more to me than some fuckin' leg."

No amount of Bill telling him that it was okay made it so. It was one of those empty, hollow phrases that people who had never experienced war first hand, on the front line often said because they couldn't think of much else to say. Joe had heard very few men in the 101st tell anyone, even each other, that it would be okay, save for Captain Winters on occasion in the presence of a dying man. It wasn't okay, but it had been what Joe needed to hear Bill say.

Joe nodded once, then twice, and bit down on his bottom lip until he was sure his teeth would puncture the skin. As quickly as he had left his foxhole that day on the hill southwest of Foy, Bill grabbed Joe's hand with both of his, and squeezed tightly, like he never intended to let go. And he didn't; practically fell asleep until a nurse found him and scolded him for managing to get out of his room and abscond with a wheelchair. And even as he was wheeled away, turning his head back toward Joe and winking at him, Joe felt Bill's hands still clutching his, just as he still felt those arms around him among the carnage and chaos, the fragments and the crimson snow, pulling him out of harm's way.

_Yes. It should be different. No. It could be different._


End file.
